A/N: Yes, something that isn't Warriors or One Piece. Amazing, isn't it? I'm trying to get back into this fandom, but it seems that...all the pairings I love are considered...strange. So I'm starting with something simple. A short character-introspective for Breda. : )
He is afraid of dogs.
Just like some people are afraid of monsters, some of storms. Just like some detest the dark, some cannot stand heights. Some fears are logical. Some aren't.
Heymans Breda likes to think that his fear is very logical. Even if his team doesn't. But that's fine, because they don't know.
They don't know that dogs are monsters.
He was seven when it happened. Heymans and his younger sister, Lucille, had gone for a walk. Just down the street, to the little corner store. He was going to buy her a popsickle - because it was her birthday and, really, their family didn't have the money to buy her much else.
But this popsickle...Heymans had been saving up for it all summer. Yard work, house work, pet sitting. And he'd just barely managed to scrape enough together for this one, rare treat.
"You stay here, Lucy. I'll go get your gift!" Heymans said cheerfully, and he left his younger sister outside for just a few minutes. Just long enough to go in, buy the cold-treat, say hello to Mr. Donovan, and come back out.
They did it all the time. Their neighborhood, though poor, had always been safe.
The large doberman outside of the store, mouth stained pink with blood and saliva, had never been seen before. No one could say where it came from. Where it went. Why it was there, when no one else was around.
Heymans doesn't remember the dog lounging at him, sharp fangs sinking into his arm. He just remembers seeing his baby sister, his five year old Lucille, laying on the ground in a pool of dark red.
Dead.
They don't know why the mere sight of Black Hayate terrifies him. Even back when the dog is just a pup, just a small thing. Why it sends him into hysterics.
He was nine when it happened. Heymans was walking home for school, alone just like he normally was. Out of choice though, because he couldn't stand his friends asking is his arm was still sore. If the scar was still there.
So he walked home alone. His neighborhood was a safe one after all, always had been. His parents didn't worry - because fluke things like the incident never happened twice. Not to the same family, to the same person.
Really, it should have been safe. The Larchers always had their dog, a hulking brown thing named Bessie, locked up tight. Chain around the neck, chainlink fence around the yard. A five-foot high sheet of metal wires between himself and the slobbering, growling dog.
Heymans always walked on the other side of the street anyway.
It didn't help - not when a branch tore the fencing down, letting Bessie loose. When the dog pulled so hard against her chain that it snapped.
Heymans remembers hearing her snarl at him. Turning around. Seeing her standing there, eyes narrowed and lip drawn up to reveal yellowed teeth. There was fear. Then there was pain.
It takes seven months before Breda will change in front of his new squadron. Yes, he knows that they all have scars. Everyone does now days. But their scars...they come from one person, one thing.
Not from an entire species of animal. Not from something that they can never truly escape from.
When he takes his shirt off, he can feel them staring. Anyone would. Thick, deformed lines marr his chest. His stomach. His left arm, high, almost at the shoulder.
They try to hide their gazes but he knows they are there anyway - and while they wonder why dogs scare him so badly, he remembers what it felt like to get each scar.
He was sixteen when it happened. Breda was out with a friend. Someone nameless now, faceless now, only there for a good time and a laugh or two. He should have been home - studying or cleaning or just telling his parents that he loved them.
But he wasn't. Instead, he had a grand night on the town with some guy he'd met at school. He didn't get back home until late. Almost two in the morning.
The front door was sitting wide open. Kitchen light, parent's bedroom light, and bathroom light on. Things had been knocked over in the living room; and there was blood everywhere.
On the couch, where his mother had been sitting as she waited for him to come home.
On the carpet, from when she had tried to run away.
On the stairs, because that was where she fell, where she was killed.
There was blood everywhere.
On the upstairs bedroom wall, because his father had been standing when it happened.
On the table, from when he had tried to grab a weapon.
On the bed, because that was where he fell, where he was killed.
Their neighborhood had always been a poor one, but a safe one. They didn't own a telephone. So Breda turned and he ran, fast as he could, to a neighbors. Had them call the police.
Evidently, the robbers had dogs with them when they broke in.
They don't know that dogs are monsters. Murderers. Killers.
His team, they just see it as a quirk. As a Breda-thing. They don't see the logic behind it - but that's okay, he finds himself thinking, because they don't know.
They are afraid of other things. Of storms and darkness. Of heights and monsters.
Heymans Breda? He is afraid of dogs.